Who Is Edward O. Wilson? Who Are You?
-- By Jimmy Stanley, ATM-B
From a speech delivered April 22, 2002
I believe in Serendipitymaking fortunate and unexpected discoveries by accident.
A few days ago, my wife, Barbara, directed my attention to a notice in the paper that
the great biologist E. O. Wilson would be speaking at LBJ Auditorium. I bought a ticket and read two of his books in preparation
for the talk. I would like to report to you a few things he says that might help us. At the end of my talk, I would like to
challenge you to ask yourself two questions. But, I will save the questions until the end.
Wilson grew up in the Southdifferent places in the Florida panhandle and Alabama. As
a boy he became fascinated with the wonder, mystery and beauty of the natural world around him. He loved every aspect of animal
life, but he was especially fascinated with the social insects. At 16 years of age he decided to get serious about his career
as an entomologist and he decided to focus on ants. He wrote a letter to an ant expert at the National Museum of Natural History.
And he sent ant specimens from all over Alabama, labeled and identified. The ant expert responded quicklyyou got half of them
right. He did not say, You got half of them wrong. Is there something here that we Toastmasters might learn?
This encouraged Wilson to continue. He earned a Master of Science degree at the University
of Alabama. At that point his mother offered to pay his way through medical school, but he declined. He wanted to follow his
love of pure science and earned a Ph.D. in entomology at Harvard. Are we following our real love?
Wilson had his share of early failures. He tried high school football and failed to
make the second team on a squad of 23. He failed on the track team in college. He lost one eye as a boy. His math ability
was not very strong. Yet, he found his nicheoutstanding biologist, naturalist and author. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize
winning author. Wilson wants to tell us that no person does all things well, but every person has certain strengths and abilities.
Life is a lot more fun when we discover what our ability is and follow it with enthusiasm.
Wilson greatly admired his Yale professor, Dr. Hutchinson. Hutch trained 40 of the
best ecologists and population biologists in the world to the doctoral level. They all seemed to admire and love the man and
to have drawn strength and momentum from his example. He welcomed every graduate student into his office, praised everything
they did and found some merit in their work. His overgenerous praise did not weaken the fiber of their character. What can
we as Toastmasters learn from this man, Hutch?
Wilson is best known for his work on biodiversity He writes that 1.4 million species
of life have been identified, which he thinks is only about 10% of the total. He believes that the exciting thing is that
in the next 25 years, most of the remaining 90% will be identified.
I promised you that I would conclude this talk by asking you two questions. The first
is What truth have you discovered in your life?
Wilson discovered three truths in his life.
The other question I have for you is What one word would you use to describe yourself?
Wilson uses the word, Naturalist. Yes, he is a great biologist and a prize-winning
author. But, he sees himself as Naturalist. What one word would you choose to describe and define yourself?
Think about it:
Who are you? And what have you learned?
A House for Makhosi
-- By Carol Cespedes, ATM-S
From a speech delivered June 17, 2002
5:30 am : We boarded our bus for work, still bleary-eyed and fuzzy-headed from jet
lag. Fifteen minutes later we were at the worksite, trudging up the hill in chilly darkness. As the sun rose over Durban,
South Africa, we set out to find the spot where we were going to build a house. Benny and I had been assigned to house 951,
which turned out to be a concrete slab on the hillside with such an inspiring view of wooded hills and city skyline that reminded
me a little of our Austin hill country.
Yet these beautiful hills had a troubled past. This was Cato Manor, a township on the
fringes of Durban, where in 1968 the government forcibly removed African and Indian residents and destroyed their homes in
order to create a kind of no-mans land separating white, Asian, and black neighborhoods in this city. Evicted residents were
forced to put up their shanties far away from the city. Now apartheid was gone, but old living patterns remain. This was why
Jimmy Carter and Habitat of South Africa decided on this site for the Jimmy Carter Work Project. We were healing and restoring
a community.
President Carter and his wife devote one week every year to working actively on Habitat,
conducting a blitz build maximum impact in minimum time. Benny and I were there as part of a force of nearly 3000 international
volunteers who would join with locals to put up 100 houses, a small community, in one five-day work week.
We greeted other volunteers who were already gathered at the site, and then paused
for morning devotions broadcast over the loudspeaker. That was the way we were to begin each morning for the rest of the week
predawn bus ride, quick cold breakfast, morning devotions. We were never allowed to forget this project was a work of faith.
Our house leader, Dennis was a carpenter from Long Beach, California. He lined us up
and asked, hopefully, Who of you has had masonry experience?
No ones hand shot up although three volunteers admitted to working with concrete block
at some point in the past. We were quite a motley crew 10 Americans including retired people, young professionals, and one
family of three from Colorado mom and college-student son and daughter. There were about 10 South Africans, including the
homeowner, Makhosi Shoba and her father, 2 Koreans, and 1 volunteer from Madagascar. One of the South Africans was a professional
plumber, one was a mason, and Hugh, Makhosis father, was a professional housepainter. The rest of us were eager volunteers,
some with skills from previous Habitat projects, but others like me simply learning on the job. And learn we did because we
had a strict deadline. All houses must be completed and ready to turn over to their owners by Friday afternoon.
Over the next few days we not only learned to lay concrete block, but to build frames,
put on a tile roof, set windows and doors, hang drywall, mortar, caulk, paint, landscape, and always clean up! We worked until
the sun dropped below the horizon, then walked down to the chow lines for dinner. Even though an exuberant troop of Zulu performers
kept the evening air charged with marimba and drum beats, we rode back to the hotel with only enough energy to shower and
fall into bed until our 5 am wake-up call.
We were dirty, we were exhausted, we were frequently frustrated by tools that were
scarce, calculations that were off, mistakes that had to be undone because of our lack of skill, but we were still a happy
crew because every day we saw the little house grow. Everyday we got to know each other a little better. We joked, sweated,
argued, and drove Dennis crazy. We were building a team.
And we became especially fond of our homeowner, Makhosi. She was a quiet young woman
who had been living in a shantytown with her fiancé and seven-year-old daughter. Makhosis parents were divorced when she was
an infant and she didnt know her father until she was in high school. Makhosi had trained as a dental nurse, but her earnings
were not enough to buy a house until Habitat for Humanity offered a solution.
Habitat is not your conventional charity where rich people are giving things away to
poor people. It is built upon shared work and shared responsibility. The goal is not just the building of houses. It is the
building of community. Every homeowner worked side by side with the volunteers, building what Habitat terms sweat equity.
The experience of working together creates a bond uniting the people who will live in this new community outside of Durban.
And it does even more.
The Jimmy Carter Work Project attracted volunteers from all over South Africa. The
South Africans on our work team included a young white speech therapist and an Indian real estate agent, as well as an African
mason, and an Indian plumber, and three young Africans of student age. Here we saw the breaking down of social and racial
barriers and building of community happen before our very eyes.
Besides Americans and Africans, there were volunteers from Canada, Ireland, Japan,
and 50 volunteers from Korea, which was the location of last years Jimmy Carter Work Project. There were volunteers from Egypt,
Madagascar, Malawi, and other African countries because our project was simply the culmination of a build taking place all
over the African continent, constructing 1000 houses in 18 different countries since January of this year. One of the most
exciting things for me was to find people who had benefited from Habitat in their own countries coming to help us in Durban.
On the final day we raced to finish the mudding, painting, and clean-up. Jimmy Carter
stopped by with Rosalyn to inspect and congratulate us. We held a little ceremony when the work was finished and formally
presented Makhosi with the keys to the house. She cried and hugged each of us, saying it was surely a miracle, a dream come
true. Her father, said that he was inspired by the example of the volunteers and planned to continue working as a volunteer
for Habitat in South Africa. As we exchanged addresses, said good bye to our new friends and started for the closing ceremonies
we understood we had been part of something very important.
We had built a house for Makhosi Shoba, but we had also learned something about ourselves,
about our place in the world, about faith and possibility. And we had been privileged to be part of the miracle of reconciliation
and community building - in this land of South Africa.
